MOG says Fijian voters were able to exercise their right to vote freely

Co-Chairs of the Multinational Observer Group have said yesterday evening that they did not observe any irregularities in any of the electoral steps observed to date, including during pre-polling, postal voting, or election day voting.

While giving their interim statement, they say that Fijian voters were able to exercise their right to vote freely.

The MOG says the Fijian Elections Office had built upon lessons learnt from delivering the 2014 and 2018 General Elections to improve its administration and operational effectiveness.

They say the publication of updates on final results has been slower than anticipated due to additional quality control processes.

The MOG says on the evening of 14th December, the FEO reported to them an anomaly in its FEO Results App presenting provisional results which was immediately rectified.

The Co-Chairs noted following this event, several political parties expressed concerns.

The MOG notes that the FEO Results App is not used to count votes, but only to publish results.

They say Election Day votes are tabulated and counted manually at polling stations and pre-poll, postal and recount votes are counted manually at the National Count Centre.

The MOG says that the tabulation process is robust with appropriate quality assurance processes.

The Co-Chairs say that the periodic publication of final results has initially been slower than anticipated, based on the publication of results every 6 hours in 2014 and 2018.

The MOG understands that the delay has been due to additional quality control processes that were implemented after the anomaly that occurred in relation to the FEO Results App.

They congratulate the FEO, in particular the polling day workers, for their professionalism and commitment to provide voters with the opportunity to express their political will.